The Rise of Non-USD Stablecoins & Why They Are Relevant to Southeast Asia - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

good afternoon everyone oh you can hear me good good afternoon everyone my name is Tian Wei I'm the co-founder and Deputy CEO of fast so uh fast is uh has been around for quite a while we are a business banking platform that has been uh leaving coverage for both 200 000 small businesses across Singapore and Indonesia but today I'm here I'm excited to talk about streetx straight Act is the web tree arm of fast that uh we have been pushing on the digital assets payment infrastructure for over the last five years so we have been very fortunate to be in this space for in Southeast Asia the last couple of years and we have been having the privilege the ability to serve more than 20 000 uh I mean 20 digital platforms across this region so some of them are a very normal household brands that you guys probably already know from the largest some of the the most International digital assets exchanges to some of the more pioneering D5 exchanges in the world we have the ability to basically grow and help them with the Fiat on-rem and off-ramp solution for the last couple of years itself but uh in that space has been however growing very rapidly for ourselves we have seen how the rise and the the rise and the turn of the market very rapidly over the couple years to the couple of different uh bear market and Blue Cycle however last year itself have been one of the best years for the industry as a whole over in this part of the world we saw more than 2.5 billion dollars in dollars being processed by us by uh there's for our payment Partners there's needing for them to on-ramp off ram to this platform so in 2019 writing on the success of providing payment infrastructure for a lot of these companies a lot of our partners have been talking about a need for stablecoin solution there's non-us dollars so that is when we came together with a couple of different players in the industry in 2019 to launch xscd which is our Flagship product under the brand new of straight X which is a non-us dollars they were going back by the Sing dollar itself under our existing licenses and that itself have been really been live since 2019 on the first on the ethereum and silica blockchain and recently on the polygon blockchain itself and we most recently also launched xidr which is uh in the start of this year which is our rupiah back token root out currency back token in Indonesia itself so I think the audience is probably very very familiar with stablecoin itself so I don't have to tell you guys the needs for stablecoin but maybe more specifically on the different currency needs however not all stable coins are built the same in this part of the world I think in general there are four major categories the Fiat back saver coin which is where X actually is we are fully backed by Sing dollar itself actually when we first launched a product it is regulated under the e-money regime in Singapore that's why every dollar of our saver coin is backed by a one dollar thing Dollar in our Singapore government back Banks right other than access GD and the likes of usdc which is our Fiat back saver coin another major category of stable coins are the commodity backs one that you know a good example is pixel go that probably a lot of you are familiar with besides comedy back one there are also crypto back saver coins such as die that has been widely used in disaster as well and of course last but not least the more exciting space that we have been seeing uh in the last couple of years which is the algomatic stable coin side of space but again we want to re-emphasize right that xscd and xidr has been always been from day one a one-to-one back Fiat back sabercoin that's regulated under the existing licenses that we have across both Singapore and Indonesia uh we have been working with regulator very closely since 2019 and there is a reason why we're able to do and continue serving the community that we have so then the great question to ask ourselves here is why straight X why is stable coin that's denominated in non-us dollar itself so this is what we truly believe as a as a firm or Australia over here right you know 98 of the Civil coin in the world right now that is in the market that's perfectly thing is still denominated in US dollars that doesn't quite make sense for us right fast or straight X itself is Singapore based and we have much Market of customers across Singapore and Indonesia what we realized very very quickly that it doesn't make sense for stablecoin solution to be only be back in US Dollars there's a very large untapped Market in this part of the world as well so I think maybe to just jump right into to talk a bit about southeast Asia itself right I think the latest Google reports have really shown case that this part of the world is one of the fastest growing world uh in terms of economy but more importantly we have a very large untapped and uh fast young audience or 400 million of adults across southeast Asia itself and we are still seeing however more than 200 million of them almost half of them they're still under bang and underserved in this part of the world and this is where there's a large untapped opportunity for blockchains and digital assets to make a difference in this part of the world this is where we as tradex here believe that a lot of the technology and the advantage that blockchain bringing about in the world beyond the speculative side have really have very real world use cases here right I think the programmability nature of stablecoin and blockchain technology has allowed us to basically build better product that is at a lower cost uniconomical wise to serve a lot of the underserved economy in this part of the world right imagine you know Financial product Insurance products and services that typically are only accessible to the more High net worth individuals today can be done fractionalized wise at a very cheap cost for a lot of the Emerging Market players especially in Indonesia itself beside programmability I think we have been a local players in the payment industry for the last five to six years right and what we have noticed that a lot of the folks when they come to Southeast Asia they will imagine that this is one country right but actual fact southeast Asia consists of more than 10 different Geographic countries itself each with their own local domestic payment infrastructure and you know fast has been at the frontier trying to push for that over the last six years we have uh you know make quite a bit of uh hit wins in that direction where we have been connecting local domestic payments across Singapore and Indonesia but a lot still have to be done and that's where we saw opportunity to leverage blockchain technology to help to bring about much more faster settlement speed at lower cost and last but not least this is the another piece that we have been seeing in the market despite you know fintech bloom in this part of the world for the last six years right we are still seeing many many of these players out there they're still building War Gardens right every part of the world you see the folks like grab choppy all of them are coming up with their own ecosystem building wall Gardens in this e-wallet that is not accessible to other developers and this is what we feel that a stablecoin solution backed by local currency in this part of the world that is open that's interoperable will allow more Innovation and different developers to start building on it and basically make this part a much better system for the rest of the world so we launched the access GD itself back in 2019 itself and we're very happy to share that by today it is already one of the largest non-us dollars back sabercoin in the world by market cap and you know thanks to our partners in the ecosystem uh we have support for many of the exchanges which used to be our client in the first place so some centralized exchanges that you probably all known of like crypto.com and Luna and luno and liquid itself to decentralize exchanges like one inch like you need to stop and DFX these are where xxgds are really listed and traded on a daily basis do do check them out of course beside exchanges partner we also understand that there is also need to make sure that accessory and xidr are going to be first class citizen in some of the the platform that's needed to make this ecosystem work right so we're happy to share that we also have been first class citizens in non-custody wallets such as metamask and Leisure and we also have partnership with institutional custody to make sure that if you are integrating such solution you can quickly get up to speed without having to spend time building up from scratch again and most importantly right as fast as a payment infrastructure company from day one have always been focused on providing real world utility in this part of the world right so we have partnered with some of the the best players in this industry to start building up solution they have real world application Beyond speculation in this part of the world so you're going to see X actually being used in payments and invoicing solution in landing and earn products as across this kind of company and also more towards the liquidating mining side of things so since our launch in 2019 we are very happy to share that the more than 7 billion dollar worth of extra GD have been transacted on chain and the pace of this transaction have been increasing and we are able to do so because there has been major focus on compliance so we are a major payment institution that is licensed and regulated by Mas and we have been the space for the last six years so by working very closely with the regulators and the police force we have enabled us to make sure that infrastructure continue remaining stable and allowing this to have a sustainability that's needed right so players that have been using us for the last six years can see the same level of assurance in terms of protection of their funds in terms of stability in terms of not ensuring they are real don't get shut down overnight and today we can see xhd and xidi across tradex serving more than 200 000 users across southeast Asia and this is again fast growing for us and with our products have expanded Beyond just a basic uh on-ramp off-ramp Channel we have the mean direct mean Services which allow a lot of exchanges and webtry Company to directly take accessory as a form of payment directly via our API onto the chain itself without needing to having to interact with local licenses and have us take care of all of that if you need large OTC transaction you can come to straight X they'll help you convert from stablecoin like usdc usdp to Sing dollars and back back to Vice verses and of course our own product which is the latest ever added to our studio product has been very exciting in terms of offering stable safe uh earns for for accessory use and last but not least right this is something that's very very um happy to share about at the start of this year writing on the success that we have built over the last two years we have learned xidr our Indonesia rupiah staplecoin cyber coin that we believe has is going to be the better role for us to potentially help to provide better Financial Services to the underbank and unbank in Indonesia itself right if you look take a closer look at Indonesia right it's a stats that probably you can find online as well internet penetration rate Indonesia have reached 82.5 percent right with and Indonesia represents almost half the population of Southeast Asia right everyone will be telling you in the southeast Asia is a big driving Market but the honest fact is it represents half of the population is actually in Indonesia itself but if you look at what Bitcoin Association of Indonesia will tell you the number of users that have access to digital Assets in Indonesia is still 7.4 million Which is less than three percent of the entire population this is why I would say that there is this fuel is right for disruption there's a lot of opportunity over here that's waiting for a lot of players like you guys over here to start targeting southeast Asia and especially Indonesia and that's why we believe xidr will be a product that will allow you guys to enter this space quickly with the rails that you're already familiar with backed by our existing licenses and our on-ramp and off-ramp Channel we will be able to allow you to get your web3 product or your latest technology on the blockchain site to get to the audience that we already served today so with that my name is Tian Wei I'm from a co-founder of straight X yourself if you guys are Keen to know more and would like to serve this part of the market and you need a player that's licensed regulated that have a know-how in the business to come to our booth m60s or you know reach out to us on our Facebook LinkedIn or Twitter itself thank you everyone